Monday 31 October 2011

Just because something is designed to shock doesn't make it art

See Fr Z's post  here The ' multi-cultural' double standards here are glaringly apparent. An authentic 'secular' approach would say that either all religious traditions ahould be protected or none at all. My own preference would be none at all, and let the real debate - and opportunity for conversion - begin...
But this is just another predictable and culturally self-hating soft target. Just who is the playwright here trying to shock - his parents, or grandparents? Just grow up. This is the problem in a decaying civilisation when beauty itself has come to be regarded as in some way irrelevant or even immoral. We end up with the merely gratuitously offensive, grotesque and the ugly masquerading as meaningful, 'unflinching', 'iconclastic',  human communication.
I certainly wouldn't ban this play but, then, I wouldn't pay to see it either - unlike the perpetual adolescents, in rebellion against a religious culture they haven't really experienced, and whose god is "art." This is another illustration of the uphill struggle which is modern evangelisation. The French bishops' reaction * evades the issue rather than addressing it. A missed opportunity.

* 1/11/11  My thanks to Henri for clarifying the nature of the responses - see comments

1 comment:

  1. Some precisions: the writer of the play said subsequently to the protest "I pardon them. They do not know what they are doing".
    And many French Bishops (for example +Aillet episcopi Baionensis & +Centène ep. Venetensis)issued declarations supporting the demonstrators. The episcopal conference is in the hand of "moderate wojtylians", and sometimes "ratzingerians" Bishops publish comuniquees contradicting those of the CEF. It is the case in this story.

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